Is Armidale some secret to the rest of the world?
Aside from a local council that needs the riot act read to them in more ways than one, Armidale is a beautiful and booming town that offers far more than your average regional city. So, why are we having to fight so hard for basic services that we need?
Any which way you look at it, businesses should be breaking down the door to get into Armidale. Politicians should be all over us. Our population and economy should be building at double digit rates, year on year. But it appears the only metric that’s right is property prices.
According to the 2021 Census, we have a younger population than most towns, with a median age of 34 compared to 39 for NSW, 38 for Australia, or 46 for regional centres.
We also have a higher educated population – 30% of people in Armidale have completed some tertiary education, compared with 23% state or nationwide. Unsurprising for a university city.
As a community we are extremely tolerant and welcoming, actively advocating for refugees like our Ezidi community to come here, embracing the Brethren community – nearly 3% of the Armidale population – and all they add to our city and economy through their many businesses, and we’ve had a mosque for as long as I can remember. And yet, the proportion of our residents who are migrants is considerably lower that the nation or the state – 74% of people were born in Australia (compared to 67% nationally) and a whopping 62% had both parents born in Australia too (compared to 46% nationally).
Importantly for businesses, we have lots of high income jobs – thanks to our major employers like UNE, APVMA, and the Department of Regional NSW all having lots of staff on six figures – and low cost of living, which translates into big disposable incomes. The median income is $3533 a month and the average cost of living is $1677.
There are jobs everywhere at the moment: of the 200+ jobs in Armidale advertised at the moment on Seek, there is everything from manual labour, customer service and admin roles through to government project officers, a variety of management positions, lecturing or research roles, and myriad well paid senior roles including Professor in Nursing or Clinical Dean at the School of Rural Medicine, Director of UNE SMART Farms, Chief of People Officer for a social service provider, or Senior Project Engineer working on construction projects worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
We have a very rich culture scene with more art galleries, music, culture, theatre, and other entertainment than any keen enthusiast could ever consume. While we struggle a bit to know what’s on sometimes, there is always something on.
So why is it we can’t get doctors?
Why is it that we can’t get some really simple businesses, like a shoe repair shop?
We have no Target, Big W, Best and Less, JB Hi-Fi, or many other chains that other similar sized but older and less wealthy centres take for granted. Why is that?
Granted, the accomodation shortage may make it hard for people to come here, but given the chronic shortage of accomodation and endless need for student accomodation – even without the current intensity of solar and wind farm construction – why we don’t have big developers building huge student unit blocks like a UniLodge or Iglu? Property prices may have gone up 12% last year but land is still pretty cheap, with big blocks around town up for sale and ripe for big developments. Ask the developers already here or any real estate agent – they can’t build fast enough.
Why do we have to fight so very hard for public transport? Or footpaths? Or roads that don’t disintegrate with every drop of rain?
And why do we keep losing important community assets like the hydrotherapy pool and a whole high school at the hands of city bureaucrats who have probably never set foot here?
On paper, and every now and then in real life, Armidale is a gold mine of endless possibility and opportunity.
Something is going very, very wrong, but I don’t know what it is. All I know is we shouldn’t have to fight this hard.